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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23758975">Warm Place</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/charseraph/pseuds/charseraph'>charseraph</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ball and Cone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Eventual Requited Love, Friends to Lovers, I hope you like internal monologues, I refer to them both as he/him but they /are/ genderless, M/M, One-sided/unrequited love, Pining, Platonic Relationships, Temporarily Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:40:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,872</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23758975</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/charseraph/pseuds/charseraph</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ball and Cone are traveling companions in a sometimes scary, sometimes fun world. Seeing, being seen—their experiences are universal.</p><p>What they’ve yet to work out, however, is how they see each other.</p><p>—</p><p>Honestly just a fun personal project to see what trails of thoughts I can follow. I make edits to extant chapters sometimes!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ball &amp; Cone, Ball/Cone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Dodie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey! So this is the first fanfic I’ve written, I’m just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I hope you enjoy it, because I sure as heck am!</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Cone walks through his mind in the very early moments of the day.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ball and Cone had been friends for longer than either of them could remember.</p><p> </p><p>They’d spend each day in the other’s air, dusk to dawn, starting and ending their waking hours facing the other from their pillowcases.</p><p> </p><p>Sometime in the unmemorable past, Cone figured they’d agreed on one bed as opposed to two. Neither of them commented on this arrangement.</p><p> </p><p>Well, not verbally nor to each other, at least.</p><p> </p><p>If anything, Cone quite liked the proximity, but he’d never leave it at that. Looking for a justification for his lack of protest to the change, he’d cite the more invigorating sleep each time they’d share their queen-size. He consoled himself that the additional body heat and some of his own natural processes, all by-point outlined in some scientific study he’d never read, were to blame.</p><p> </p><p>Thing is, Cone was more or less right, but he’d consistently gloss over <em> one </em> minor detail: a detail that he’d leave out of his consciousness’ roll-call each time he‘d wake up, but was always there regardless.</p><p> </p><p>But none of this ran through his head this particular morning. In fact, he’d never actually pass the latter end of that line of thought. Rather, his mind was occupied on the motions of awakening; his subconscious was feeling docile, by grace.</p><p> </p><p>Cone put into practice what he’d learned from overwhelming his metacognitive bandwidth this early in the past. Memories of ruefully cluttered thoughts spanning like a pigsty of a room bore warning stares into the back of his head. Calmly, he focused on cracking his one eyelid open, sole expectation to bring the sleeping figure of his companion into view. </p><p> </p><p>The mission was an overwhelming success, and lying there just as he anticipated was the dodie yellow ball, resting away, eyelashes soft and delicately still. The mid-morning light thrown across their gently sloping cover was... well, Cone admitted, it was quite beautiful. He drank in the glowing scene before his staring could register in his mind (a frequent occurrence that he often let slide).</p><p> </p><p>As Cone’s more instinctive side gawked (rather unsophisticatedly, he might add), his wakeful self slinked in to prod him of his priorities. <em> Shower first, gawk later, </em>he received at once. He ignored his body’s callow protest and lifted himself from the layers of sheets to make for the bathroom.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. If a tree falls in the forest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ball and Cone take a walk.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To say the two friends’ excursions varied in tone didn’t cover the half of it.</p><p> </p><p>Just the other day, they were chased down the road by the peeling other end of that very same, <em> very </em> vicious road. With Ball at the wheel and Cone’s voice easily overpowered by the roaring wind, all he could do was grip at the door of their red convertible as he frantically noted to install side-view mirrors as soon as the opportunity presented itself.</p><p> </p><p>Ball’s driving skills had probably saved them on multiple occasions. Ball expanded on <em> probably</em>, stating that it was duly impossible to tell the agendas of the things blocking the road. And indeed <em> things </em> they were.</p><p> </p><p>Entities of all sorts would engage them in adrenaline-dripping chases that made Cone consider motioning through a marathoner’s stretch before each time he left the house. He winced thinking back on darting through recursive landscapes (he’d lost track how often this would happen) and was averse to the blurry pain that would afflict his legs and head afterward.</p><p> </p><p>Despite all of this, he would never actually stretch before leaving the house. This morning’s impromptu break for the fields was no exception. Stretching… it broke up the hopeful outlook of the moment. The inaction of a skipped stretch heightened the exhilaration of the chase. There was something missing when you felt you were prepared for whatever apparition, corridor, or combination thereof that confronted you last. It was totally irrational, and Cone did it for Ball.</p><p> </p><p>The two friends were on a serene morning walk, so far so good, and Cone’s vision roamed the free white landscape surrounding them. Ball also seemed calm... he could surmise this much without needing to look in his direction. But he would be hard-pressed to admit that by the lax rhythm that Ball’s breathing took on, he was able to tell that he was happy. I mean, anyone attentive enough would be able to tell... the clues were clear from his subtle noises, as soft and smooth as the enamel earth beneath them.</p><p> </p><p>So far, so great, actually. This hike was turning out to be quite the proud investment and way worth getting up out of bed this morning.</p><p> </p><p>Cone’s inner vision shuttered in a flashback of the topological nightmares he’d encountered in the past. His insides squirmed recalling those places’ complete disregard for physical plausibility. Being in the wake of such cosmic blindspots took a real toll on his internal compass, and Cone no longer mourned its diminished capacity and erratic sabbaticals. </p><p> </p><p>His ability to confidently tell where he was fluctuated wildly nowadays: the most intricate a path he could navigate was the trek from the front door to the living room center. Anything beyond that would call for a double-take from his newly arrived destination to where he should have been before.</p><p> </p><p>In regards to his reasoning behind determining where he came from and where he went, Cone knew that some kind of ruleset had to have existed consistently enough to establish rapport with its denizens. But despite all its inexplicably garnered trust, absent father Physics didn’t always reciprocate. </p><p> </p><p>The idea of steadfast laws in the universe must’ve had meaning at some point, but what the rules even were yielded blanks. To him, they were merely words widowed by their definitions.</p><p> </p><p>He wondered: what compelled these concepts to hold out for so long in his head anyway? It wasn’t like he was able to access their contents, so what gives? They sat in his peripheral subconscious like locked chests with long-discarded keys, completely eluding time. Were they really that repulsive to the maw of the ticking clock?</p><p> </p><p>On the topic of clocks, he blamed Ball for his thrown off timekeeping ability, which sat toppled and dusty beside the at least still fretfully glanced-at compass. But if a sudden degradation of temporal sense were to happen to anyone, it would probably be to a person who could say they’d stepped into spatiotemporal anomalies like one would step into bistros on a boardwalk: Cone should’ve seen it coming. </p><p> </p><p>He wouldn’t have been able to anticipate Ball’s first spiel on time’s omnipresent nonexistence anyway. After that ordeal, he’d scrapped his idea to ask him to lunch “later.” What was even the point?</p><p> </p><p>A thought, a clear amalgamation of his resignation, mental fatigue, and subdued thoughtfulness, slid itself over onto the forefront of his awareness like an unexpected folder on a tightly run reception desk. The idea quipped that, liminal space or promenade, Cone would still consider the circumstance to be highly romantic. Cone lightly brushed aside the self-jab, but not before weighing a new stroll route by the beachside.</p><p> </p><p>His mind descended from the clouds back to his prior train of thought, which carried a new sour note of indignation at being interrupted by some lovesick reverie. Cone didn’t care for the discouragement and promptly spat out the topic in favor of a new one to chew on.</p><p> </p><p>Beside him, Ball inhaled quietly, indicating he was mulling something over too. Cone briefly recalled, as an appreciated break from his own whitewater thoughts, how Ball’s voice would seep ever so slightly into his exhale. Back to mulling they both went, Cone adopting a notably lighter mood.</p><p> </p><p>If there were laws in the universe, then his whole world must’ve been a poorly regulated neighborhood. He surely couldn’t fathom the idea that distortions of space and time were somehow <em> impossible </em> . This isn’t to say that “perturbations in the field,” as Ball expertly called them, were explainable, however. Cone was certain of nothing about them except that they were downright uncomfortable to have pushed through his body. He also knew that they <em> happened </em> , that by some oversight in cosmic jurisdiction they were events that <em> were </em> possible and that <em> were </em> in your chances to encounter.</p><p> </p><p>Heck, given the lingering soreness from the last perturbation—just a few days ago—he weighed the notion that, perhaps, a set of laws with no abiders, enforcers, nor interpreters may not exist as a set of laws at all. He decided against falling down the rabbit hole that lonesome trees that make no sound likewise fall into, and moved on.</p><p> </p><p>He did this in favor of leaving abstract hurdles to sharp-witted Ball (his specialty, really). Cone already had enough on his plate, like learning how to fit in some contribution to the guy’s lectures. Though admittedly impressive and compelling to listen to, they weakened Cone in his inability to offer anything more than requests for clarifications and simple game show-style interviewee responses to questions Ball posed merely for the sake of furthering his increasingly intangible argument. It was exhausting.</p><p> </p><p>And yet... when Ball broke out a philosophical dictum a quarter of the way into their walk, Cone did not hesitate to give his undivided attention. The scenery couldn’t hold a light to the joy of Ball’s presence beside him. And he definitely didn’t need to look in his direction to discern his feelings (though he looked anyway for the fun of it) because the gentle squeeze of Ball’s hand and the unconscious swirls of his gloved thumb on Cone’s palm, starting some moments into his new monologue, told Cone all he needed to know.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I hope to write more of these deceptively simple moments between them... so much silence surrounds them. What are they thinking about, y’know?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Umber</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ball and Cone watch the night sky.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The walk went swell.</p><p> </p><p>Ball had been stringent on setting his ideas in <em> just </em> the right order, meticulously sending his clauses orbiting through the air in an elaborate verbal dance. Twilight clambered over the horizon to stretch its thin torso far above the plains. In the shade of its wine-purple and umber ribs, Ball landed his final point. The small remainder of the walk flowed with his silence as he beamed with the success of another topic well-delivered.</p><p> </p><p>Their home reared its angular rooftop above the ridgeline within the minute. The silhouette was like a scissor-cut against the balsamic skies. Despite the pitchy substance’s steady looming, the sight of it still promised a good night’s rest to the travelers.</p><p> </p><p>Cone hadn’t realized his eye was downcast until the upward slope occluded his vision. Once he did look up, he found Ball a while’s way away from him, apparently already arrived at the hill’s crest. He did not expect to see him standing so still.</p><p> </p><p>Ball’s controlled, somewhat breathless state cast his stillness in an... empathetic light. Suffice to say, Cone desperately wanted to know what captured Ball and so fastened him to the ground. Judging from the latitude of his eye, he figured Ball to be looking far above him, focused on something of celestial degrees of separation. Cone turned back and resumed climbing.</p><p> </p><p>Ball’s periphery noted his friend’s quiet consideration. He felt oddly validated and sat down to wait out the next few seconds for Cone to arrive.</p><p> </p><p>Cone stopped short once he felt his friend’s warmth skim his side with a rice paper touch. He lamely sat down beside Ball and, perhaps in an attempt to get the full effect of his point of view, conserve heat, or just to be closer, he leaned a fraction over Ball’s direction. He didn’t particularly want to probe his subconscious for an answer at this point. He shoveled his scurrying focus into his visual processing department in hopes of staunching the internal pleas to introspect. <em> Please! Just for a second! </em> he would hear.</p><p> </p><p>He blinked, wearied by his pummeling heartbeat. He flicked his sight out to the landscape, hoping, <em> hoping </em> to lose himself just like Ball had.</p><p> </p><p>The evening sky appeared in such a way that anyone who gazed into it would think that it’d be a nice time to go home (but not without savoring the easy sight the low light provided on their eyes first). Long-replacing their scuffling uphill footfalls, their quiet panting mingled like airborne filament in the trembling air.</p><p> </p><p>Cone couldn’t resist savoring Ball’s company. He reveled in the dreamy scene and all of the elements that complemented it. His breath loosened from drinking in the wine of the onsetting dark.</p><p> </p><p>For a hazy, uncertain amount of time, the two lazed in the front yard of their house, staring into the abyss above them. Cone half-heartedly griped that Ball was only here to wedge in another point from his earlier monologue. Something like disappointment bruised his heart at the thought. He... he was probably going to say something about abysses staring back or the other, so Cone waited. But the break in silence never came.</p><p> </p><p>In fact, Ball hadn’t said <em>anything</em> for the better part of the formless hour. And yet another development: he carefully, if not somewhat distractedly, leant back from his seated position and set his eye parallel to the spilled-ink sky. Cone was mildly struck by his balance, impeccable and allowing him to attend elsewhere rather than calculating the rolling-risk of his perfectly curving sides..</p><p> </p><p>Um. Well, that <em>was </em> what a sphere was defined as, if he remembered grade school correctly. It <em>sort</em> of was. Never mind.</p><p> </p><p>He tore his attention from Ball to the night. <em> Relax, lie down, </em> the ground beneath his sliding feet whispered its encouragement.</p><p> </p><p>But before he could course-correct, he felt Ball’s arm rested alongside his own. The scarce touch between them scrambled the air’s molecules, sprinkled in dares on brand with his emotional impulsivity, and threatened to superheat the space with a maddening slathering of napalm. A recipe for disaster.</p><p> </p><p>He resisted opening his palms to cup Ball’s hand, to give him shelter from the cold, hard ground. His wrist twitched, but he wrenched his muscles back in fearful consideration of the possibility that Ball was relishing the crisp air sleeping on his glove. The last thing he wanted was to ruin that for him.</p><p> </p><p>He was really in the wringer here. Between the swelter of self-consciousnesses and the chill of the settling dark, Cone felt pinned. He was pinned in the same way that someone who’d suddenly found themselves in the eye of a storm was pinned: every movement, though physically unprovoked, was strictly guided by the whipping winds surrounding them. Cone didn’t appreciate being held hostage like this.</p><p> </p><p>Some neural system found itself unoccupied for just long enough to take some action. Out sent a signal to his voice. But as soon as the order left his brain, everything was sucked into the whirlwind again.</p><p> </p><p>“We should go inside.”</p><p> </p><p>His voice trickled through the invisible debris of the avalanche laying on his chest. His vocal cords hadn’t yet been clued in on the chaos upstairs, and ever since that morning they dawdled in the radio silence. As a result, nothing in his tone indicated anything of the hurricane inside.</p><p> </p><p>Cone only realized he’d even said anything once he heard the words himself. He momentarily ignored the rushing waters splitting him breath-from-body to turn his sight towards Ball.</p><p> </p><p>And he had looked just in time to catch Ball wink the dripping moonlight from his eye. So clearly visible were Cone’s words, every syllable so delicately weighed and released to swirl in the black of Ball’s pupil. Cone spotted his reflection, distorted by tiny currents of fluid on his eye. He largely favored the escape before him than of the cold, black vacuum just a few moments before. There was an unknowable intelligence in Ball’s eye, a marble spirit that reached out to press its thumb against his throat. To it, he’d surrender his breath every time.</p><p> </p><p><em> Overcome! </em> his system shrieked, <em> By an eye! </em>What would be the use of going anywhere if he’d just end up unable of focusing on anywhere but his stunning eye?</p><p> </p><p>Well… that’d be just okay.</p><p> </p><p>Some of the stones encasing him were struck by this admission and crumbled until the moth-wingbeat winds proved strong enough to erode them entirely. At last, he could breathe, but it wasn’t much of an upgrade yet. Laying there had allowed the wind to paint his bones in a thin veneer of the nighttime’s chill. In preparation for their trek’s home stretch, he mentally leaned in to hear Ball’s answer; one part of him on the lookout for data, the other merely in it for the sound of his voice.</p><p> </p><p>The bristles of an exasperated gust swept along along the edges of his back that sloped up from the floor. It was as if the night itself had had enough of their loitering.</p><p> </p><p>“Yep.”</p><p> </p><p>Both Cone and his entire half of the hillside sighed, the former, internally, the latter, in a billow that hastened the muted shufflings of the two as they got up to walk the rest of the way home.</p><p> </p><p>It was quiet, an atmospheric kind of quiet—as it had been for the majority of the time now. And neither his mind’s snarling thunder nor the 8-ton boulders that weighted his bones could face the amber light radiating from the open door. There was his gate to heaven, and there was his angel, robed in milk and honey with clouds at his feet.</p><p> </p><p>Oh, how lovely. How lovely was he?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Woo hoo!! More monologues!! I dunno man, I have a lot of fun writing these. They can go anywhere!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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